1. Field
This disclosure relates to surgical instruments and method used for extracting hair follicles.
2. Background Information
In hair transplantation procedures, hair is typically extracted from the scalp of a subject in one area of the scalp, referred to as a “donor” region, and is then implanted in another area, referred to as a “recipient” region. These procedures are typically time-consuming and require considerable specialized expertise because of the minute dimensions of individual hair follicles, the large number of individual follicles involved in a given transplantation, variability in the depth of hair follicles, the fragility of hair follicles, and the variation in dermal characteristics upon which the procedure is performed. Hairs typically grow in clusters consisting of one to six or more hairs. These clusters are termed follicular clusters, follicular groups, or follicular units. Each individual follicle within a follicular cluster is surrounded by a membrane termed a hair follicle sheath. The hair follicle sheath surrounds a hair shaft and extends from the upper dermis to the subcutaneous fat.
Hairs in the donor region are traditionally extracted by employing a sharp scalpel to excise a large section of the scalp that may be more than 1 cm wide and over 30 cm long from the donor region. This process is called strip donor harvesting. Strip donor harvesting results in a linear scar that may range between 0.1 mm to over 1 cm in width and may be over 30 cm long. The average strip scar is between 2 mm and 5 mm wide and its width may vary along the length of the strip scar. Linear strip scars create difficulties in concealment in many instances especially with short hair styles. Furthermore, strip harvests contain thousands of individual follicular clusters that must be further subdivided into individual follicular clusters. This is a time consuming process with a high rate of injury to the individual follicles. This injury results in waste of a finite supply of hair.